5 Lead Management Myths: What’s Getting in the Way of Your Growth

While lead management isn’t the most glamorous marketing process, it
is one of the most critical. Just like air traffic control is crucial,
the process in which marketing acquires, rates, nurtures and passes
leads to sales is cornerstone to the marketing and sales alignment
relationship. Here are five lead management myths to help ensure you are
on the right track.

You Should Flow Leads Directly to CRM
Not so fast. Many believe that passing leads directly into CRM is a
no-no for marketers. What about all the time and energy invested into
making marketing automation work well? It probably goes without saying
but every lead should map directly through marketing automation. This
way, your scoring models have the chance to factor engagement data into
the mix and you can ensure you are feeding all the data you can into the
model. Whether you are using a predictive scoring solution or not, the
more data you feed into that model, the better.

More Leads are Better than Fewer Leads
Not always the case. When companies are suffering from lead fatigue,
the sales team is unable to engage every lead that marketing passes
over. The result? Some leads are left untouched, only to disappear into
the ether. When this happens, a better approach is to send fewer leads
over to sales. This may sound counterintuitive, but by focusing on
sending over leads that convert at a higher rate, sales doesn’t have to
waste its time churning through leads that are unlikely to close. In
fact, one of our customers is passing over half of the leads it
previously did and is realizing lifts in conversions.

Marketing Impacts Only 50 Percent of the Pipeline
In reality, marketing should touch 100 percent of the pipeline. Through
the website, social media, content, emails and nurture, marketing is
present throughout every touch.

Marketing is Responsible for the Top Part of the Funnel, Sales for the Bottom
Just as marketing is present throughout the entire pipeline, marketing
shouldn’t get dismissed after the handoff to sales. In fact, marketing
should play a major role in sales enablement to ensure reps are best
prepared for customer interactions.

A Single Metric can be the Window into your Funnel
Wrong again. We need to all accept that there are zero silver bullets in
the world of marketing. Earlier this month, Elle Woulfe described why
fixating on one metric isn’t the right approach.
For example, an abundance of MQLs may be viewed as a positive indicator
at the surface, but could actually signal issues with lead scoring.